With the United States’ 50% tariffs on Indian goods coming into effect on Wednesday (August 27), Peter Navarro, the senior counsellor to President Donald Trump on trade and manufacturing, has increasingly trained his guns on India.On Thursday, Navarro said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that “the road to peace [in Ukraine] runs at least partly right through New Delhi”, criticising India’s purchase of oil from Russia.A day later, he posted on the social media platform X, describing India’s foreign policy as “strategic freeloading” and that Trump was confronting “this madness”. Parts of the post were taken from an article he wrote in the Financial Times earlier this month (“India’s oil lobby is funding Putin’s war machine — that has to stop”).Navarro, a Trump loyalist from the days of his first presidential election campaign in 2016, has long championed tariffs as a policy tool. He is said to have greatly influenced Trump’s views on the matter, including the decision to impose tariffs on China during his first term.Navarro’s argumentNavarro has linked India’s oil purchases with its trade deficit with the US, saying it has extended a “financial lifeline” to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “war machine”.“We run a $50-billion trade deficit with India—and they’re using our dollars to buy Russian oil… A 50% tariff—25% for unfair trade and 25% for national security—is a direct response,” he said on Friday.In recent days, New Delhi has reiterated that the US, in fact, encouraged India to buy Russian oil after its Ukraine invasion to keep global prices from rising, and has cited its domestic energy needs.Story continues below this adExternal Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Putin during his visit to Russia last week, where he stressed that the US tariff was “unjustified and unreasonable”, and it was wrongly being “presented as an oil issue”. He later argued that the policy was also inconsistent, since China is the largest oil importer from Russia and it faces lower tariffs than India.On the Indian side, as The Indian Express has previously reported, there has been a slowdown in oil imports from Russia in recent weeks. According to officials in the refining sector, the decision was driven by discounts on Russian crude narrowing, rather than US officials’ public disapproval.However, Navarro has not budged from his position.It is unclear what is driving Navarro’s India-focused rhetoric, given the deepening of India-US ties in the last few decades. However, that does not mean India has never come under his radar, with both Trump and Navarro previously calling it the “king” of tariffs.Part of it may have to do with Navarro’s pro-tariff approach in general. He is a professor of Economics and Public Policy, having earned a PhD from Harvard University, who has consistently framed high tariffs on US goods as a problem and tariffs as one solution.Story continues below this adIn an article for The Wall Street Journal in 2019, he wrote, “India applies higher tariffs 90% of the time and China 85%, thereby helping to block many American exporters from selling goods at competitive prices to more than one-third of the world’s population.”Explained | Why China, world’s largest importer of Russian oil, does not face 50% US tariffsNavarro, 75, has also made failed bids for office in the past, including from the Democratic Party. He met Trump while he was on the campaign trail nearly a decade ago, and ended up joining the first Trump administration (2017-21). In 2018, Politico wrote of him: “Three years ago, Navarro was an obscure business professor in Southern California… Now, Navarro has more influence than perhaps anyone else in shaping U.S. trade policy into one grounded in the idea that America can never “win” so long as other countries are reaping benefits, too.”This has been witnessed in Trump expanding tariffs on countries beyond China in his second term, and his contested view that trade deficits are always bad for a country. Additionally, compared to Trump’s first term, which saw established figures in the Republican Party attempt to influence and contain the administration, the loyalists-driven second Trump administration has allowed Navarro to assume a greater role.Notably, Navarro supported the discredited claim that the 2020 presidential elections were “stolen” from Trump. In 2024, he was released from prison after serving a four-month sentence, for defying a congressional subpoena from a committee investigating the January 2021 US Capitol riots. While announcing his appointment in 2025, Trump said he was “treated horribly by the Deep State, or whatever else.”China hawkStory continues below this adBefore his stint in the government, Navarro was best known for authoring several books on China. In The Coming China Wars (2006), he wrote about threats to the world due to the economic and military rise of China, covering everything from economy to climate change, and saying the country “cheats” on trade.“Any time U.S. politicians try to crack down on Chinas unfair trade practices, China and its growing band of Washington lobbyists quickly attack these politicians as “protectionists”… In fact, it is perfectly reasonable for the United States to challenge China on its unfair trading practices,” he wrote.Navarro’s books also came under scrutiny when it was found that he quoted a Harvard-educated expert across multiple works, later revealed to be a fake identity he created using letters of his own last name – “Ron Vara”. He defended himself by terming it a “whimsical (writing) device and pen name.”Alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, 64, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 62, Navarro is now among the top voices advising Trump on economic issues. Each of them has somewhat different approaches and views, and has prevailed from time to time. For instance, the relatively more moderate Bessent was believed to have convinced Trump to announce a 90-day pause on the “reciprocal” tariff rates announced on April 2 on “Liberation Day”.Story continues below this adA CNN report noted at the time that Navarro somewhat receding from public view was “fueling hopes on Wall Street that his influence had waned since markets began gyrating after tariffs rolled out in early April.” Still, it termed him the “ultimate survivor in Trump’s inner circle”, saying he would be in front of the camera “whenever Trump wants to send his most hawkish message”.